Discover your personal productivity style: Reimagine Your Way for Hybrid Work

Discover your personal productivity style: Reimagine Time Management Your Way for Hybrid Work
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Are you planning to work from home on Thursday? Can you switch from Tuesday to Wednesday next week, so your team can brainstorm on how to solve the current issues?

As more workplaces reopen and “return to work” efforts begin in the coming weeks and months, the time management issues inherent in a hybrid workplace may jeopardize your productivity.

To be productive and efficient in a hybrid workplace, time management must be reimagined.

Why? Because conventional time management solutions, with their singular emphasis on time planning and allocation, are insufficient. They do not provide comprehensive support for optimizing your performance in the complex, interconnected, technology-driven hybrid workplace.

Your work strategies, or your approach to planning and allocating effort across goals, activities, and time periods, have a notable effect on your performance and productivity. This method is frequently unconscious and ad hoc, rather than planned and scientific. However, patterns can be found that are influenced by your unique cognitive personal productivity style—your ingrained pattern or preferred method of detecting, processing, and managing information to guide action.

“When you begin organizing your life and work according to the natural preferences of your style,” writes Tate, “you are likely to find yourself relaxing and enjoying the sensation of truly being in the driver’s seat of your life rather than struggling with the tension that arises from fighting against your preferred thinking style.”- Carson Tate, founder and managing partner of Working Simply, Inc.

Due to the fact that everyone has a uniquely distinctive cognitive style, you will also require a unique set of work tactics. It is via the customization of these tactics to your specific strengths, preferences, needs, and abilities that you may maximize your performance in a hybrid workplace.

How do you define your personal productivity?

Your personality, organizational style, priorities, and social preferences all have an impact on how you work; more precisely, they dictate how you work best.

Carson Tate acknowledges that everyone is unique. As a result, you can confidently display many profiles. According to Tate, these profiles should serve as “guidepo sts” for determining your specific combination of skills.

“Do not be concerned if you find yourself straddling two or more styles.”

1. Your Personality

Introversion and extroversion also have an effect on your productivity style. If you are an introvert working in a highly engaged, noisy, and high-energy setting, you may run out of energy halfway through the day. On the other hand, if you’re an extrovert working from home, you may already be aware that you’re more productive in a busy coffee shop than in your quiet home office.

2. Your Preferences

While our personality plays a significant role in our productivity style, it is not the only element. You must also examine other critical factors, such as your choices or preferences on how you set objectives, manage your time, collaborate with others, and learn.

What are the 4 Productivity styles?

There are four distinct cognitive types, or productivity styles: the Prioritizer, the Planner, the Arranger, and the Visualizer. To help you understand and get familiar with the different styles of productivity and determine your productivity style, read the descriptions below and consider the one that most closely matches your personality.

1. The Prioritizer 📊

Prioritizers are those who prefer analytical, critical, pragmatic, and fact-based thinking. They are primarily interested in maximizing productivity by calculating the time required to perform specific tasks based on the amount of time available. A Prioritizer is capable of accurately completing large amounts of work rapidly and is at their best when processing data and tackling complicated problems that require a laser-like focus to solve. They are not interested in idle chit-chat and rarely provide excessive personal details. Their emails are succinct and direct, mostly using only a few sentences. Through analyzing data critical analysis, decisiveness, goal orientation, consistency, and logical thinking, prioritizers contribute to problem solutions.

Strengths

  • Identifying the criticality of each task and project
  • Analyzing and resolving difficulties
  • Dedicated, consistent, and decisive
  • Realistic Thinking

 Weakness

  • A proclivity for authoritarianism and rigidity
  • Over competitiveness
  • Prioritizing expediency over excellence
  • Prioritizing the project over the process
  • Do not value team interaction

Communication Style

The Prioritizer would rather forgo the chit-chat and just offer them the facts. They do not support emotional thinking and prefer detailed thinking thus they do not give out too much personal information and keep their communications are usually short. The Prioritizer can provide and accept feedback free of emotion.

Prioritizers prefer to ask ‘what’ questions: What are the facts? What is the workplace productivity level?

2. The Planner 📅

A planner schedules time for projects organizes tasks sequentially, creates accurate, detailed project plans, and frequently completes work ahead of deadlines. The planner is the team member who focuses on project specifics and planning utilizing tools like the calendar and to-do list. They are always engaged in systematic, detailed, and sequential thought. Planners do not participate in time-wasting meetings that lack action plans and concentration; they thrive on timetables and activities. They are willing to forego creative diverse projects and activities that might derail project plans. Planners’ emails are always detailed and clear, with bullet points. Planners contribute to the practicality and action orientation of data/project plans, and they play a critical part in flawless planning by identifying overlooked defects.

Strengths

  • A preference for activity, consistency, and utility
  • Identifying and resolving problems in plans or procedures
  • Organizing data
  • Developing comprehensive processes and plans

Weakness

  • Rigidity
  • Ignore growth opportunities 
  • Inadequate spontaneity
  • Excessive reliance on the outcome
  • Processes are more valuable than projects

Communication Style

A planner is infatuated with schedules and action plans. If you want to convey a message to a Planner, put it on paper and be specific and step-by-step.

Because planners are process-oriented, they frequently ask ‘how’ questions: How will we fulfill these tasks? How are we going to settle this situation? How can we make this procedure more efficient?

To know more about planning and organizing check out our blog on 7 Essential Calendar Management Skill to boost your productivity style

3. The Arranger 💬

Arrangers are natural communicators who value expressive, emotive, and supportive thoughts. They deftly facilitate project meetings and do better at work when they collaborate with their coworkers to complete tasks. They are not supporters of persons who rely excessively on data and love stories and chatting. Arrangers can effectively contribute to the marketing ideas, honest assessment of underlying emotions, facilitation of team engagement, establishing relationships, and selling ideas.. They promote collaboration to maximize work performance and make natural, real-time judgments as events develop, blocking off time to complete tasks. They will keep all stakeholders informed of progress and disseminate ideas effectively throughout the organization.

Strengths

  • Emotional awareness of others
  • A keen sense of intuition
  • Persuasion
  • Effective at expressing Concern

Weakness

  • Insufficient planner; can miss critical elements
  • Inadequate knowledge of the impact their style has on others
  • Excessive interpersonal involvement; taking on excessive responsibility for the problems of others
  • Nearsighted gives less priority to the big picture
  • Prioritizing people over projects

Communication Style

The Arranger likes in-person talks in which they can fully utilize their body language and tone of voice to communicate with their teammates. They use stories to convey their message and are curious about the impact of a project or assignment on others.

Arrangers, by nature of their focus on people, frequently ask ‘who’ questions: Who is involved in this project? Who supports this decision? Who is capable of assisting you with this task?

4. The Visualizers 🎨

If you’re constantly focused on the big picture and abstract concepts, you’re probably a visualizer. Visualizers enjoy synthesis, integrated, comprehensive, and intuitive thinking; they thrive under pressure and quickly become bored when there are fewer assignments to concentrate on. Most of the time, visualizers are not concerned with details; instead, they focus on potential. They are persons who have an exceptional amount of enthusiasm for breakthrough ideas, and thus are capable of leading such ventures. Their emails are frequently lengthy due to their abundance of thoughts and concepts. Visualizers excel at problem-solving, innovation, and the integration of novel thoughts for change. They also excel at identifying new opportunities.

Strengths

  • Open-mindedness
  • Prioritizing the big picture 
  • Innovation
  • Creative Problem Solver

Weakness

  • Valuing possibilities over process
  • Excessive impulsiveness and spontaneity
  • Tend to ignore minor features
  • May fail to plan ahead and end up turning in work late

Communication Style

Not surprisingly, the Visualizer prefers to communicate using visual terms such as “see,” “envision,” and “the broader picture.” Using metaphors and visual aids will assist you in communicating your message to the Visualizer. Additionally, the Visualizer values knowing how a task or project fits into your company’s larger goals.

Your Productivity Style: Find It and Use It for Better Work

Now that you have become familiar with different productivity styles and identified which matches your the most. Here are strategies and tactics listed below for each style to boost your productivity.

Prioritizer

Improve your execution by leveraging your analytical, data-driven, and goal-oriented strengths. Calculate how long it takes you to accomplish routine tasks and then attempt to improve your time on each one. This enables you to arrange your time more precisely each day and increases your execution speed.

Utilize your natural proclivity for efficiency and create custom filters or rules to save hours each week on email management. Utilize Gmail’s filters to automatically file, discard, and forward messages.

Planner

Utilize your systematic, logical thinking and your fondness for to-do lists to create a 15-minute list. A 15-minute list is a collection of chores that can be completed in less than 15 minutes. These are simple, short chores that require little effort and cognitive power to perform. This enables you to take advantage of the micro-segments of your day as you are waiting for a meeting to begin or while waiting in the carpool line to complete work.

If you use Google Calendar to plan your work then with TimeTackle you can export your calendar you can create, track, delegate tasks to team members, and view them in your calendar.

Visualizer

Speed and variety are critical components in maintaining peak performance. Throughout your workday, act like a sprinter, not a marathoner, and focus on one activity or task for twenty minutes before switching to another.

For you, out of sight, out of mind is a productivity trap. Utilize “Time Tackle tags”-categorize incoming events and meetings according to their importance. You can categorize your calendar events to understand what project you or your team is working on, what appointments you are getting, or what meetings you are attending. You can get an analysis of these tags in the reports. This enables you to swiftly prioritize and act on incoming events and plans.

Arranger

You perform best when collaborating with others, and too much solo time can detract from your performance. Schedule time for interaction and connection with other people throughout your workday. A fast text exchange with a buddy, a brief conversation with a coworker, or a FaceTime call with your mother might rekindle your motivation and attention.

Connect your ability to work skillfully with people and technology by utilizing TimeTackle to automatically track any requests, ensuring that you never forget to follow up again.

Summary

No single productivity system, tool, or strategy will work identically for every individual. The more you understand about yourself, the more equipped you will be to choose a style that will enable you to do better work. Even the most experienced productivity veterans can be tempted by the next new system and believe they will be adaptable, despite their strong, natural preference for something else. Working according to your preferences and strengths will result in significantly greater efficiency, effectiveness, and happiness in your job than attempting to fit into a system, technology, or structure that is incompatible with your natural productivity style.

Related Reading: A Simple Guide of the Pomodoro Technique

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Maximize potential: Tackle’s automated time tracking & insights

Maximize potential: Tackle’s automated time tracking & insights